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“Bring Him the Blood of the Outlanders!”: Children of the Corn as Farm Crisis Horror

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The Politics of Horror

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes Children of the Corn (1984) as a critical response to the US Farm Crisis, a dark period in the history of agriculture. Constituted by compounding political, economic, and environmental shocks the Farm Crisis devastated the Midwestern corn belt and ushered in significant shifts in the US food system. Extending tropes common to the rural slasher and plant horror genres, Children of the Corn re-presents the trauma of the Farm Crisis, exposing the most damaging impacts of neoliberal agripolitics. Through its depictions of a deserted farm town and villainous food crop, I argue, the film articulates not only the hegemony of surplus cultivation but also an industrialized food system centered around corn.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Parker, L. (2014). 21 Stereotypes Midwesterners are Tired of Hearing. Buzzfeed. Accessed from: https://www.buzzfeed.com/laraparker/stereotypes-midwesterners-are-tired-of-hearing?utm_term=.hfKKnVZqx#.dy894emna

  2. 2.

    Wright, A. (2013). Farm Pop: “Children of the Corn” and rural horror. Modern Farmer. Accessed from: https://modernfarmer.com/2013/10/farm-pop-children-corn-rural-horror/

  3. 3.

    Barnett, B. J. (2013). The U.S. Farm Financial Crisis of the 1980s. In J. Adams (Ed.) Fighting for the Farm. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press; Barlett, P. F. (1993). American dreams, rural realities: Family farms in crisis. UNC Press Books; Harl, N. E. (1990). The farm debt crisis of the 1980s. Iowa State University Press; Peoples, K. L., Freshwater, D., Hanson, G. D., Prentice, P. T. and Thor, E. P. (1992). Anatomy of an American agricultural credit crisis: farm debt in the 1980s. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

  4. 4.

    Associated Press (1991, October). Farmer Suicide Rate Swells in 1980’s, Study says. The New York Times. Accessed from: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/14/us/farmer-suicide-rate-swells-in-1980-s-study-says.html; Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). (1997). History of the Eighties: Lessons for the Future, vol I. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Accessed from: https://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/history/vol1.html

  5. 5.

    Bell, D. (1997). Anti-idyll. In P. Cloke and J. Little (Eds.) Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation, and Rurality, pp. 94–108. London: Routledge, p. 106.

  6. 6.

    Dudley, K. M. (2000). Debt and dispossession: Farm loss in America’s heartland. University of Chicago Press; Harl, 1990; Peoples, et al., 1992.

  7. 7.

    Barnett, 2013, p. 166.

  8. 8.

    Harl, 1990, p. 29.

  9. 9.

    FDIC, 1997.

  10. 10.

    Harl, 1990, p. 29.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., p. 17.

  12. 12.

    Genoways, T. (2017). Bringing in the Beans: Harvest on an American Family Farm. Harper’s Magazine. Accessed from: https://harpers.org/archive/2017/09/bringing-in-the-beans/4/

  13. 13.

    Drabenstott, M. (1983). The 1980s: A Turning Point for US Agricultural Exports?. Economic Review, 68(4), 3–15.

  14. 14.

    Barnett, 2013, p. 164.

  15. 15.

    Drabenstott, 1983; Genoways, 2017.

  16. 16.

    Barnett, 2013, p. 168.

  17. 17.

    Peoples et al., p. 47.

  18. 18.

    Harl, 1990, p. 102.

  19. 19.

    Burgmaier, L. B. (Writer and Producer). (2013). The Farm Crisis [Television broadcast]. Iowa Public Television. Accessed from: http://www.iptv.org/video/story/2388/the-farm-crisis

  20. 20.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 15.

  21. 21.

    Barlett, 1993.

  22. 22.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 9.

  23. 23.

    Barnett, 2013, p. 160.

  24. 24.

    Berry, W. (1977). The unsettling of America: Culture and agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, p. 12.

  25. 25.

    Bell, 1997, p. 106.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., p. 95.

  27. 27.

    Bell, 1997; Murphy, B. (2013). The rural gothic in American popular culture: Backwoods horror and terror in the wilderness. Springer.

  28. 28.

    Murphy, 2013, p. 150.

  29. 29.

    Bell, 1997; Hayden, 2016; Murphy, 2013.

  30. 30.

    Hayden, K. (2016). Inbred horror revisited: The fear of the rural in Twenty-first century backwoods horror films. In L.M. Avery, B. Ching, K. E. Hayden, K. A. Jicha, B. M. Lowe, P. E. McKay and J. W. Sipple (Eds.). Reimagining rural: Urbanormative portrayals of Rural life, pp. 59–72. Lexington Books; Murphy, 2013.

  31. 31.

    Bell, 1997, p. 101.

  32. 32.

    Hayden, 2016, p. 65.

  33. 33.

    Bell, 1997; Murphy, 2013.

  34. 34.

    Keetley, D. (2016). Introduction: Six Theses on Plant Horror; or, Why Are Plants Horrifying?. In D. Keetley and A. Tenga (Eds.) Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, pp. 1–30. London: Palgrave Macmillan; p. 18.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  36. 36.

    Tenga, A. (2016). Seeds of Horror: Sacrifice and Supremacy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wicker Man, and Children of the Corn. In D. Keetley and A. Tenga (Eds.) Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, pp. 55–72. London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 69.

  37. 37.

    Keetley, 2016, p. 6.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 16.

  39. 39.

    Keetley, 2016; Murphy, 2013; Tenga, 2016.

  40. 40.

    Marder, M. (2011). Plant-Soul: The Elusive Meanings of Vegetative Life. Environmental Philosophy, 8(1), 83–99.

  41. 41.

    Iowa Corn (2019). Corn Facts. Accessed from: https://www.iowacorn.org/media-page/corn-facts

  42. 42.

    Tenga, p. 68.

  43. 43.

    Bell, 1997, p. 101.

  44. 44.

    Berry, 1977, p. 12.

  45. 45.

    Tenga, 2016, p. 58.

  46. 46.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 9.

  47. 47.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 6.

  48. 48.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 7.

  49. 49.

    Tenga, 2016, p. 68.

  50. 50.

    Wright, 2013.

  51. 51.

    Tenga, 2016, p. 68.

  52. 52.

    Bell, 1997, p. 106.

  53. 53.

    Dudley, 2000, p. 9.

  54. 54.

    Berry, 1977, p. 45.

  55. 55.

    Barlett, 1993; Berry, 1977; Dudley, 2000.

  56. 56.

    Berry, 1977, p. 38.

  57. 57.

    Hayden, 2016, p. 65.

  58. 58.

    Bell, 1997, p. 106.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA

    Kathleen P. Hunt

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  1. Kathleen P. Hunt
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Correspondence to Kathleen P. Hunt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina Sumter, Sumter, SC, USA

    Damien K. Picariello

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Hunt, K.P. (2020). “Bring Him the Blood of the Outlanders!”: Children of the Corn as Farm Crisis Horror. In: Picariello, D.K. (eds) The Politics of Horror. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42015-4_13

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